Ethan comes to town.

My friend Ethan came to visit me last week to begin his Grand Asian Adventure. Having him here made me realize exactly how bizarre this wonderful country is all over again. On the day that he flew in to Hyderabad, I took him on a bike ride around campus. We biked down the long, winding road to the main campus, passing water buffalo with their young, chai canteens, monsoon lakes and about 30 dogs doing an excellent job at playing dead. By this point, all of these things seem very normal to me, but Ethan was in a somewhat state of shock after his first 15 minute bike ride in India.

The next day, after letting him sleep for about 12 hours, we set off to explore Hyderabad. Although I've been living here for 3.5 months, I've been so busy traveling and taking cooking/sitar/yoga classes that I haven't actually had much time to just wander around the city. We took a shared auto rickshaw from the small gate to the Lingampally train station. Once again, Ethan thought it was hilarious that the rickshaw driver insisted that we join his already overflowing vehicle, and proceeded to blast bollywood music the entire way to the station. A man joined us about halfway there and grabbed Ethan's hand, exclaiming, "Hello! I am Johnson!" Ethan smiled and said, "I'm Ethan!" "No, no!" The man kept smiling and shaking his hand, "I am JOHNSON!" There was nothing to do but smile, as so often is the case here.

At the train station, the fascination with Ethan continued. One man came over to us as we waited for our train, placed himself between Ethan's legs (we were sitting down) and started a delightful broken English conversation with us....something about how he was going to Delhi that very same day, and would we like to come? It's a very long distance....and that was his train right over there! We just smiled.

We got off the train after a few stops and took a rickshaw to the Hussain Sagar lake. There's a gigantic Buddha statue in the center of the lake, which we got to by taking a rickety ferry along with a handful of other Indian families. On the ferry, a group of teenagers sat right next to us. After several giggle episodes, one of the girls finally spoke, in perfect English. She wanted to know all about us, where we were from, what we were doing, etc. Then she asked for our signature, on the notepad that one of her friends had just magically produced. It may have been the first time anyone has asked me for my signature, so it was a big moment for me. After we signed, they gathered around and examined our names, and demanded to know why Ethan had written his name in Urdu (Urdu is a language similar to Hindi, but written in the Arabic script). They wanted his name in English, they kept saying. So he printed his name in parenthesis next to the signature. As we were getting off the ferry, one of the girls shoved a gaudy, rhinestoney ring into my hand. Meri dost! (my friend) she said.

At that point we were quite famished, so we took a rickshaw to my favorite Indian restaurant, Chutney's. Our rickshaw driver thought the fact that we were going to Chutney's so hilarious, that he told anybody who was willing to listen...other rickshaw drivers, people walking by on the street, security guards, etc...I decided to show off a little by busting out some Hindi. This too he found hilarious. We pulled up at a gas station to get gas and he demanded that I repeat the few feeble sentences I had attempted to the gas station attendent, who also laughed excessively. Being the butt of every joke definitely gives one a sense of humility.

For the sunset, we made our way up to the Birla Temple, a gorgeous white marble temple perched on top of a hill overlooking the whole city. We watched the sky turn to delicious shades of orange and pink while waiting in line to see the Shiva idol, and listening to a elderly women chant "hare krishna, hare shiva..." over a loudspeaker. We met an interesting man in line at the temple, who also thought everything we said pretty dang funny. After we got through the procession and saw the Shiva idol, the funny little man latched on to us and decided to show us around the museum and connecting dinosaurium right next door to the temple. He had already bought us tickets, and was pretty friendly, so it was hard to refuse. We awkwardly walked around the museum, which was completely empty, and the topic of conversation kept getting more and more bizarre, so we began to think of heading back. Note to self: always tell random men that the man you are with IS in fact your husband.

On our way back to the train station, the gods decided that that moment was the perfect time to dispense the last of the monsoon rains over Hyderabad. We found ourselves wading through 2 feet of filthy water in the streets, drenched to the bone, attempting to navigate back alleys in our mad search for the train station.

We eventually found it, and had a completely crazy yet typically Indian train journey back to Gachibowli, where we gave in to our cravings and enjoyed the best Domino's pizza I've ever tasted. All in all, it was just another day in India. A crazy, chaotic, wet, tasty, beautiful day in India.